Presenting the "other" side of academic physics, where people
backstab and give lousy talks. Where people are sometimes lazy
or incompetent, and the best don't get the credit or the job.
From the perspective of someone lucky enough to have landed a
tenure-track professorship.

Thursday, August 31, 2006

Missile Defense

Remember a few months back how great our missile defense is (I think it was a different system, but you get the idea)? Remember this is something that got implemented despite the fact that it wasn't passing the tests (or maybe "because" is the better word)?

Well, a recent, contrived test got cancelled "because of bad weather." I think CNN should be sanctioned for helping rogue nations... after all, CNN is basically telling nations that if you're going to launch an ICBM attack against North America, you really got to do it in bad weather!

Update: It looks like the test was carried out yesterday and was successful. How do I know? Lubos of course! I really hate to pick on Lubos because he's so entertaining, but he doesn't mention the weather delay. Nevertheless, he asserts:

This $85 million test has increased the measured reliability of the system slightly above 50%.

Huh? What in the world is he talking about? This test was very contrived...how contrived? Well, the Pentagon won't release the details. So I have no idea where Lubos gets this 50% number (maybe Bayesian probabilities?). Maybe it's something like if Iran launches in clear weather, sends no decoys, and transmits the missile's trajectory 3 hours ahead of time, we then have a 50% chance of destroying it. Something like that I guess!